News

Authorities in India have asked radio amateurs along the Bengal-Bangladesh border to monitor strange VHF radio transmissions that one of them has called “highly suspicious.” According to an article in the Hindustan Times, the signals were being heard in the dead of night, with participants reported to be in motion and speaking in some sort of code.

“After we wrote a letter highlighting the strange signals to the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, we were called in for a meeting by officials of the international monitoring station in Kolkata on September 22,” recounted Ambarish Nag “Raju” Biswas, VU2JFA, the secretary of the West Bengal Amateur Radio Club, in the report. The newspaper account said that when the Bengal hams attempted to contact the suspicious stations, the operators briefly quit transmitting.

“We were asked to continue the monitoring,” the report quoted Biswas as saying. “It is a cause for concern for us all, since the location is close to Bangladesh border, and that the callers were taking in codes and words with Bangladeshi pronunciation.” The operators, who were speaking in Bengali and Urdu, also used numerical codes, according to the report. -- Thanks to Southgate Amateur Radio News